Adelaide Writers' Week

Chaired by Collette Snowden

Liane Moriarty is one of Australia’s most successful authors. Her books have sold over twenty million copies worldwide, with two – Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers – triumphantly adapted into television series starring Nicole Kidman. Liane makes her Writers’ Week debut with her ninth book, Apples Never Fall, at once a compelling mystery and a satisfying family drama, and a fine exemplar of Liane’s signature combination of domestic realism and noirish mystery.

Chaired by Clive Hamilton

In January 2020, Wuhan was placed in total lockdown, leaving its residents anxious and afraid, struggling to find medicine, food and information about the strange new virus that left them trapped them in their homes. In Deadly Quiet City, one of China’s most celebrated authors, Murong Xuecen, goes in search of stories from Wuhan's 76-day lockdown. Eight people – including an exhausted doctor and a citizen journalist – share their lives and their grief as the catastrophe unfolded. Revealing truths about people, the pandemic and China today, Deadly Quiet City is a haunting documentation of modern history.

Chaired by Jo Dyer

Since leaving office, former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull have definitely and determinedly not gone gentle into the good night, instead becoming trenchant critics of the incumbent Prime Minister and his Government, and the type of politics they practise. Focussing particularly on the pernicious power of Murdoch and the urgency of action on climate change, this unlikely duo remain important and unapologetic voices in our increasingly polarised political debate.

Chaired by Natasha Cica

When Annabel Crabb and bestie Leigh Sales started a little podcast in 2014, they never imagined the cult following they would generate. Rambling conversations that traverse books, television, film, friendship, cooking and more, Chat 10 Looks 3 has inspired tens of thousands of passionate “Chatters” and now a book, Well Hello. Annabel and her other partner-in-crime and co-author, editor of the Chat newsletter Miranda Murphy, discuss the runaway success of the podcast, the book and all things Chat.

Chaired by Cath Kenneally.

Dual Miles Franklin Award-winner Michelle de Kretser’s Scary Monsters tells the stories of two immigrant Australians, both of Asian heritage: Lili, a 22-year-old in 1980s France, and Lyle, living in a near future semi-dystopian Australia ravaged by bushfires, intolerance and capitalism. Set in the past and the future, Scary Monsters is a supremely contemporary novel, with a sharp dark humour that belies the seriousness of the themes it explores, and an audacious reversible format that acts as a playful physical embodiment of the migrant’s disorientation.

Chaired by David Sly

Well-known to listeners of ABC RN’s The Health Report, Norman Swan’s clear commentary and advice on COVID-19 elevated him to a new level of prominence as his Coronacast podcast became one of the most trusted sources of information in a time of competing and sometimes hysterical claims about the scary new virus sweeping the globe. Norman’s new book, So You Think You Know What’s Good For You?, takes a comprehensive and common-sense look at how to “cut the bull” to live a healthy life.

The Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature are presented every two years during Adelaide Writers’ Week.

Introduced in 1986 by the Government of South Australia, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature celebrate South Australia’s writing culture by offering national and state-based literary prizes, as well as fellowships for South Australian writers.

Managed by the State Library of South Australia, the awards provide an opportunity to highlight the importance of our unique South Australian writers, and contribute to and support community engagement with literature.

Be the first to learn the winners of South Australia’s richest literary awards at this special event celebrating the country’s finest writers. Winners across the categories of Fiction, Non-fiction, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, as well as Poetry and the Jill Blewett Playwright’s Award, will be announced and speak on the day.

Chaired by Jared Thomas.

Hugely popular and award-winning author Anita Heiss’s new novel opens with a fictionalised account of 1852’s Gundagai floods, still Australia’s deadliest. But for the heroic efforts of Wiradyuri men Yarri and Jacky Jacky, the toll would have been much higher. Yarri’s daughter Wagadhaany survives the flood only to become an indentured slave to the settlers her father rescued. A nuanced examination of Black and White relations, a celebration of family and Country, and a literary celebration of the Wiradyuri language, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray is Anita’s finest book yet.

Chaired by Kate Mildenhall.

Two of 2021’s most innovative and engrossing books have works of art at their heart. Claire Thomas’s The Performance is set over a single theatrical performance, and uses the potent image of the trapped Winnie in Beckett’s masterpiece Happy Days to explore the colliding but disparate lives of three women. Angela O’Keeffe’s Night Blue is audaciously told from the perspective of our National Gallery’s most famous acquisition, Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, as it examines an artist’s life and the eternal conundrum of great art that springs from monstrous creators.

Chaired by Sharon Davis.

In this compelling account of contemporary conspiracies, the internet’s dark corners, and those who inhabit both, Van Badham dives deep into the world of Gamergate, Pizzagate, QAnon and more. With a new capacity to cross-pollinate with each other and online, the wild nature of the tales from this new brand of conspiracist may sound funny – Lizard People anyone? – but they leave a trail of devastation in their wake. QAnon and On lays it all bare.